Hmmmm…A house of cards beginning to unravel?

I know, I know — a mixed metaphor, but one that seems appropriate regarding Mars One: Mars One Suspends Work on Robotic Mission, ’cause the project sure is sending out mixed signals. Just a couple of days after announcing their 100 astronaut finalists, we find out that their precursor mission has gone nowhere.

Mars One, a Dutch-based nonprofit organization, announced in December 2013 it was starting work on two robotic missions it planned to launch in 2018 as precursors to its human expeditions to Mars. One spacecraft would orbit Mars and serve as a communications relay, while the other would be a lander to test technologies planned for later crewed missions.

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Mars One has said little publicly about the status of its robotic missions since that December 2013 announcement. In January, it announced the winner of a university competition to develop an experiment that would fly on the lander. At that time, the organization said the lander was still scheduled to launch in 2018, but offered no details about the status of its development.

In a Feb. 17 email, Lansdorp said that Mars One was focused for the time being on addressing a study released last fall by a student-led group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). That report, which examined the life support requirements for Mars One’s planned crewed missions, concluded that flaws in Mars One’s designs could result in the deaths of crewmembers within months of landing.

I bet they are. In case your noggin needs joggin’, Here’s my summary of the MIT report — it was pretty damning.

Mars One has commissioned as study by Paragon Space Development Corp. to rebut the MIT study which is supposed to be published next month, but we already know what that study will say. I mean, Mars One is paying for it, so of course it’s going to say the Mars One concept is solid and perfectly safe. If March comes and goes without release of the study, well…then it turns out that Paragon Space may have had enough integrity (and common sense) not to put their name on a bogus report.

I said before that Mars One is bad juju. Now it’s bad juju that stinks to high Heaven…kinda like when my dog poops on the carpet, if you’re smellin’ what I’m cookin’,